Apollo didn’t seem to mind. His privacy gave him leisure to go out and explore the world as a human, as he could have if Bendix hadn’t burst into his life kicking down doors and sticking syringes where he had no business to.

He embraced the façade of normalcy with a smile and the enthusiasm of a child. He tried pottery and painting and embroidery. He knitted Jenny a crooked quilt with clumsy patches. He sewed himself a shirt in an improbable, tacky lime green and then laughed every time his husband and daughter stole and hid it. He learnt cards games and downloaded a bunch of silly apps on that smartphone Angie gave him, even if he kept cracking the screen protection with too harsh fingers. He tried make-up and a bunch of different crafts. He turned the dried path around their house into a beautiful garden where whatever he touched flourished.

Midnighter stood by and watched it happen like a worshipper admiring a god working on a miracle. When asked, he would offer useless inputs that would make Apollo laugh, just because Apollo’s laughter was the most beautiful sound in the world.

How does this taste? Like I love you. I love you too, dear, but this is just leftover meatloaf, and rather overcooked at that.

Apollo would kiss him and Midnighter’s brain would wrestle the computer into absolute silence; the flesh invading the circuits with prepotence, stay the fuck down, now, we’re busy here. His husband would notice as he pulled back, and smirk and pop his nose. I win again, he’d joke, causing the computer’s rebooting process to fuzz louder, systems analyzing to find the loss, where’s the loss, how did we miss losing?

Yeah, how did he missed losing? He’d done it twice now, already. One should learn.

“Overthinking again, love,” Apollo would say from the couch, adding a soft kick to M’s thigh if he were close enough to touch.

Apollo was an explorer of everything, and Midnighter wasn’t. He rather liked playing the part of the one who stood on more familiar grounds and waited for his husband to return from whichever new thing he’d decide to try. He’d order take out and sprawl on the bed to listen to the latest tale as Apollo nuzzled his neck. Life was so unbearably good, sometimes.

Still. People forgetting about Apollo was just the pebble in his shoe. The milk stain on his coat. Like putting skinny leather pants on without talc or getting a hand job by a woman. It just rubbed him the wrong way.

Heh!

“M, come on,” Apollo held his hand, brought it up to kiss his split knuckles. “The world doesn’t revolve around me.”

“I’d murder everyone but Copernicus and Galileo for you, babe.”

Apollo was warm. His embrace the safest place on Earth.

Midnighter went when he was called, kicked ass, saved the day. If people didn’t mention Apollo and there was no immediate, absolute need of him, his husband would shrug and wave him away. “I’m good,” he’d say. It’d also be the truth, because M liked to fight, but Apollo was just great at it. The will to harm had never been encrypted in his bones, no matter how cruel the attempt.

Then Midnighter would come back, wash the blood off his skin and get himself fucked into the mattress, Apollo smiling at him the whole time, softly. One hell of a welcome back.

But that was Midnighter’s perspective and, apparently, the world just had yet to learn to see things as he did.

Back to the beginning, though: Apollo, forgotten. A fucking travesty, truly. Therefore—

“This is going to be good,” he muttered, through a split lip and blood stained teeth. He knew the smile that was curving his mouth, recognized it from the sting on his bruised cheekbone.

Whichever entity the Justice League had managed to piss off right now had a name with too many xsh in its name to be properly pronounced by human tongue, not that Midnighter would have bothered probably. Prioritizing his tasks, as it happened.

Because when Batman’s own Fortune Cookie tried to hack into his doors, sending lines upon lines of code instead of just picking up a phone, send a call and say, hey, dude, sorry, we’ve got a situation here, JL’s looking for help, are you free?, well. What was he supposed to do?

Showing up to the debriefing meeting, listening all about this species who evolved to be Kryptonians’ natural enemies and happened to have a molecular composition very similar to Kryptonite and to be coming to Earth to kill the last survivor? And about that, how nice, attempted genocide and it wasn’t even five in the evening. Maybe he could have listened when a bunch of self-entitled assholes explained to him that they were making up a team that could go toe-to-toe with Superman, because that was the kind of enemy they were dealing with?

Yeah. Sure. And then he'd die of old age without seeing hair or tail of this mystic enemy.

So, yeah, maybe he’d been a bit hasty in rushing in. The fact that the only ones to support his plan were Red Hood, Thick-Head Superboy and Tiny Murderous Robin probably should have rung a bell. For a moment, watching them argue with Mommy Bat and Daddy Supes, Midnighter had considered sending his own daughter a bouquet to thank her for cultivating a few braincells in her life. Not enough to learn how to work a coffee machine, but at least enough not to constantly throw herself in the line of danger.

He’d ordered the flowers online, then he’d suited up and got into the thick of it.

Okay, so maybe he'd been asking for it a bit.

But, someone to go toe-to-toe with Superman except they need to be kryptonite immune, please, and they asked him?! He was watching Andrew toying with a sunflower when the message came. The adorable bastard was flashing a palm and making the poor plant turn on itself like a whirligig.

The computer had liked his impetus almost as much as the old Bats. The string of code lines and red pop-ups of Death Danger were loud and obnoxious and absolutely unnecessary. Midnighter had already chosen the plan that ended up with him alive and the monster dead.

In his ear, through the comm he’d slipped in just because Grayson was a fucking asshole and played dirty with those fucking pleading pretty blues, there was an whole lot of chaos. Someone was screaming in worry in the background, probably Miniature Supes. Honestly, who the fuck let him out of the farm? What about curfew? Kids these days, really.

The rest of the crew was fighting and yelling and calling Midnighter all kinds of names. Someone was — hastily— blaming his early departure on Dick, which sounded fair enough.

The tentacled bullet-proof pink... sponge?... was uglier than predicted. The holes in its body were gaping and pulsing and it appeared to have no eyes, but a round mouth with three rows of sharp fangs. It had twenty-seven tentacles with suction cups all over them, and two of those were currently wrapped around Midnighter’s chest and legs. As long as they stood far away from his crotch, it wasn’t the worst situation he’d ever been into.

The computer let a loose spark that sent a spasm through his legs. It seemed to say the rusty box wasn't quite as pleased with the initiatives taken in this mission.

Well, fuck it. It wasn’t its crotch that risked to turn into the dirty fantasy of some Japanese early teen lacking parental affection.

The creature screeched. It somehow understood English, and when it spoke it was from every single one of its pores, like a creepy-ass chorus. “Where is the naked two-legged?!” it asked, shaking Midnighter like a pepper-grinder. No good, especially since he was currently upside down and the ask for help had come just after lunch. “Speak, you crazy bug!”

“God, I wish he were naked.”

Dick’s reasonable brother, the one who could appreciate the use in good old murder, Hood, cussed up a storm in his hear and faked gagging sounds. His voice was modulated so he probably still had his helmet on, and Midnighter wished him a steely stomach because throwing up in there would be a really shitty way to end a very shitty week.

Lower down, one of the holes in the spongy body of the beast widened further and the tentacles started pushing M in that direction. Which, ugh. Now it was his turn to gag. Shit, this was just one of those good days, wasn’t it?

The creature yelled something again, but Midnighter’s brain was filled to the brim with cusses and annoyed remarks about a burning pie of some kind. His attention zeroed on it and cut off the sounds from his earpiece.

Sacher Torte, M! I flew all the way to Belgium to buy the chocolate to make it! And I wasted all yesterday making the apricot jam! If it burns, I’ll break something.

Can we skip the burning and go straight to breaking?, he thought back, grimacing as the tentacle holding him brought him closer to the other two superheroes. Not to rush you, honey, but I think the thing’s trying to absorb me. Are you still far out?

It did seem to be its intent. Absorbing, digesting and stealing memories from its food, the computer supplied unhelpfully as it processed gigabytes of datas. Another - redacted - reason as to why the JL had been preaching caution, then.

As of now, Apollo’s low profile meant he would still be a secret if literally anyone else got absorbed, but there was no way the creature could pillage Midnighter’s brain without stumbling into him. He was all over his thoughts, after all.

That was very romantic, M.

Save me and I’ll be even more romantic. Rose petals and scented candles, the whole shtick.

I’ll accept nipple clamps and your leather pants.

On me or on you?

Yes.

A single laughter burst out of him before he could stop it. The creature hesitated, confused.

“Is he out of his mind? Nightwing, did you call for help from a madman?!” Wonder Woman. She couldn’t understand his charm.

“I didn’t call him!”

“Great, just great,” Green Lantern grunted. "The thing’s going to absorb the brain with the greatest killer-strategist AI on Earth, which is the worst case scenario becoming true, and we don’t even know who called him.”

The ceiling came down.

Midnighter laughed again. Even with his eyes closed, the could tell the source of the blinding light and choking warmth that rippled through the bridge of the ship. He considered a couple teasing remarks, but the other presence in his mind shot them down rather fast.

“I will leave you here.”

“Nah, you wouldn’t.” The computer buzzed statistics in his brain, but it too was in agreement that none of the past experiences supported such a scenario so it was just a quiet background noise that faded easily at the edges of his consciousness. “You love me too much.”

He opened his eyes and there Apollo was, holding Midnighter in his arms. Disgruntled, covered in alien grime — blood?, brains?, assorted gore? — and with a huge rip in his costume, from left shoulder to right hipbone.

“Stunning,” because it had to be said.

Apollo shook his head, and his hair stuck to his cheeks, but he was smiling now. “You’re incorrigible.”

“You’re carrying me bridal-style. You know it’s been my favorite position since we got married!” Someone screamed in the comms. Midnighter pulled the thing out and threw it behind his back. He’d hear all of it later from Dick, anyway. “Now, I think I was promised a cake?”

“Oh, were you?”

“Or a spanking. I’m not picky, really.”

Apollo kissed him on the lips. It was a tender gesture, mindful of his injuries, but it held the warmth of filthy promises to be fulfilled. “Let’s get started with getting you home and out of this suit.”

“So, the spanking it is? Nice.”

“M. That earpiece can pick up sounds in a mile radius.”

“Unless you’re going to spank me within a mile radius, I don’t see how this would be my problem.” If anything, it’d be Dick’s. Unless he’d already died from embarrassment and self-combustion. Rest in peace, poor Dick.

Apollo laughed, but sped away flying before M could rage on the pitiful even more.